溫和主義
用證據說話
是這樣的：
川普公他老人家周圍的人，有好幾個出了事，犯了法，坐了牢。前國家安全顧問Michael Flynn對FBI說謊，被川普公給火了，後來自己認了罪。還有一個私人顧問Roger Stone也犯了法（witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, five counts of making false statements 等等等等），結果被陪審團裁定有罪。
那司法部的檢察官，這位Aaron Zelinsky出來作證了，說他們受到上頭的壓力，要求他們在求刑Roger Stone時不依據Sentencing Guideline，而盡量減輕刑期。Zelinsky不肯 － 和其他幾位檢察官一起退出。現在把事情給抖了出來。此外司法部結果決定撤案不起訴Michael Flynn了 － 盡關他本人已經認罪了。
這就是所謂的law and order 總統 － 公然介入司法，為自己的親朋好友謀利。這在前朝會是重大醜聞，在今天大家好像已見怪不怪了。
嗬嗬。
A prosecutor’s blistering rebuke of Barr’s politicized Justice Department, annotated
By Aaron Blake
June 23, 2020 at 3:47 p.m. CDT
Attorney General William P. Barr’s moves regarding President Trump and his allies were already obviously and conspicuously problematic. On Tuesday, they became more so, thanks to a blistering rebuke from a prosecutor on the Roger Stone case.
The Justice Department in February made the extraordinary decision to scale back its sentencing recommendation for the longtime Trump political adviser. This spurred the withdrawal from the case of the four prosecutors who handled it. And now one of them, Aaron Zelinsky, has issued a remarkable statement about how that went down.
In the statement, issued to the House Judiciary Committee, Zelinsky describes a process that was at times explicitly politicized, thanks to Trump’s own interests.
Let’s break down some key sections of Zelinsky’s statement.
“In the many cases I have been privileged to work on in my career, I have never seen political influence play any role in prosecutorial decision making. With one exception: United States v. Roger Stone.”
This suggests this was hardly business as usual. What are the odds that a prosecutor like Zelinsky, who spent his career as an assistant U.S. attorney, would encounter this — for the first time — on a case involving one of the president’s closest allies?
“What I saw was the Department of Justice exerting significant pressure on the line prosecutors in the case to obscure the correct Sentencing Guidelines calculation to which Roger Stone was subject — and to water down and in some cases outright distort the events that transpired in his trial and the criminal conduct that gave rise to his conviction. Such pressure resulted in the virtually unprecedented decision to override the original sentencing recommendation in his case and to file a new sentencing memorandum that included statements and assertions at odds with the record and contrary to Department of Justice policy.”
This part of Zelinsky’s statement calls to mind a later and equally controversial Justice Department decision to pull its prosecution of another Trump aide, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. Zelinsky calls the Stone decision “virtually unprecedented,” which in combination with the Flynn case certainly paints a picture.
“I was told that the Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break, and that the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing instructions to us were based on political considerations. I was also told that the acting U.S. Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was ‘afraid of the President.’ ”
Shea is a Barr ally who took over as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia in February — shortly before the DOJ’s about-face in the Stone case. Zelinsky says in his statement that he is “necessarily” limited in what he can say and that he cleared it with the Department of Justice. Exactly how he learned about such “political considerations” and Shea being “afraid of the president” would seem extremely pertinent, but for now it’s secondhand.
“Together with my fellow line Assistant United States Attorneys, I immediately and repeatedly raised concerns, in writing and orally, that such political favoritism was wrong and contrary to legal ethics and Department policy.
“Our objections were not heeded.
“When I learned that the Department was going to issue a new sentencing memo, I made the difficult decision to resign from the case and my temporary appointment in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. rather than be associated with the Department of Justice’s actions at sentencing. I returned to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland, where I work today.”
This would seem to erase any questions about the motivations for the four prosecutors removing themselves from the case — in case there somehow were any.
It’s also notable that Zelinsky is saying all this while still in the employ of the Justice Department — a decision that would be easier for someone who didn’t have to deal with potential internal blowback.
“For the Department to seek a sentence below the Guidelines in a case where the defendant went to trial and remained unrepentant is in my experience unheard of — all the more so given Stone’s conduct in the lead-up to the trial. I was told at the time that no one in the Fraud and Public Corruption Section of the United States Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia — which prosecuted the Stone case after the Special Counsel’s office completed its work — could even recall a case where the government did not seek a Guidelines sentence after trial.”
Zelinsky makes the case that he and his fellow prosecutors were merely following federal sentencing guidelines in seeking Stone’s sentence. He also details Stone’s history of lying, which wouldn’t argue for a reduced sentence. This would seem to again point to the extraordinary nature of the Justice Department’s intervention.
“The prosecution team — which consisted of three career prosecutors in addition to myself — prepared a draft sentencing memorandum reflecting this calculation and recommending a sentence at the low end of the Guidelines range. We sent our draft for review to the leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. We received word back from one of the supervisors on February 5, 2020, that the sentencing memo was strong, and that Stone ‘deserve[d] every day’ of our recommendation.
“However, just two days later, I learned that our team was being pressured by the leadership of the U.S. Attorney’s Office not to seek all of the Guidelines enhancements that applied to Stone — that is, to provide an inaccurate Guidelines calculation that would result in a lower sentencing range.”
The Justice Department has alleged that high-ranking officials were blindsided by the sentencing recommendation — and/or that there was some kind of miscommunication about it — which led to the reversal. Here, Zelinsky indicates Shea’s office was well aware of and signed off on the recommendation, before it was reversed.
“In response, we were told by a supervisor that the U.S. Attorney had political reasons for his instructions, which our supervisor agreed was unethical and wrong. However, we were instructed that we should go along with the U.S. Attorney’s instructions, because this case was ‘not the hill worth dying on’ and that we could ‘lose our jobs’ if we did not toe the line.”
Again, the question is where these comments came from and how accurate they are. The identity of the “supervisor” would seem particularly worth probing, given that this person appeared to be the go-between.
“Ultimately, we refused to modify our memorandum to ask for a substantially lower sentence. Again, I was told that the U.S. Attorney’s instructions had nothing to do with Mr. Stone, the facts of the case, the law, or Department policy. Instead, I was explicitly told that the motivation for changing the sentencing memo was political, and because the U.S. Attorney was ‘afraid of the President.’ ”
Yet another allusion to this being about politics — and that being clear within the Justice Department.
“At 7:30 p.m. Monday night, we were informed that we had received approval to file our sentencing memo with a recommendation for a Guidelines sentence, but with the language describing Stone’s conduct removed. We filed the memorandum immediately that evening.
“At 2:48 a.m. the following morning, the President tweeted that the recommendation we had filed was ‘horrible and very unfair.’ He stated that, ‘the real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them.’ President Trump closed, ‘Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!’ ”
This is notable, because it lends credence to Barr’s claim that this decision was made before Trump’s tweet, which Barr would later acknowledge made the decision look problematic. But it doesn’t negate the fact that Zelinsky says — repeatedly — that this was done in response to perceived pressure from Trump.
“To be clear, my concern is not with this sentencing outcome — and I am not here to criticize the sentence Judge Jackson imposed in the case or the reasoning that she used. It is about process and the fact that the Department of Justice treated Roger Stone differently and more leniently in ways that are virtually, if not entirely, unprecedented.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Stone to more than three years in prison — after the initial recommendation of seven to nine years. But it’s not unusual for a sentence to come in below prosecutors’ recommendations.
“I take no satisfaction in publicly criticizing the actions of the Department of Justice, where I have spent most of my legal career. I have always been and remain proud to be an Assistant United States Attorney.
“It pains me to describe these events. But as Judge Jackson said in this case, the truth still matters. And so I am here today to tell you the truth.”
Some witnesses will criticize their superiors while not explicitly saying that’s what they are doing. Zelinsky, though, makes no bones about it.
5 takeaways from the scathing testimony about William Barr’s Justice Department
First came a federal court ruling that the case against Michael Flynn should be dropped after Barr’s Justice Department moved to withdraw its prosecution — despite Flynn already having pleaded guilty. Arguably the more interesting development came Wednesday afternoon, when a former prosecutor on the Roger Stone case testified that political pressure was indeed behind the Justice Department’s reduction in Stone’s sentencing recommendation.
Aaron Zelinsky was one of four prosecutors who withdrew from the case when that decision was made, and in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, he detailed what happened.
Zelinsky’s testimony came after the committee on Tuesday released a blistering opening statement he had written. You can read up on that here.
Below are some takeaways from his and others’ testimony.
1. Zelinsky names names
In his opening statement and his early testimony, Zelinsky didn’t name the official who told him that the Stone decision was politicized. Instead, Zelinsky just said it was a “supervisor.” And for some reason, House Democrats didn’t probe this for nearly two hours.
So it fell to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to ask Zelinsky who it was. But Jordan may not have gotten the answer he anticipated.
“So the supervisor for the questions you’re asking is the supervisor of the fraud and public corruption” unit in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office, Zelinsky said, adding, “His name is J.P. Cooney.”
Zelinsky said in his opening statement that this supervisor had said “that the U.S. attorney had political reasons for his instructions, which our supervisor agreed was unethical and wrong.”
Zelinsky also added that other officials were party to the discussions.
“At the time in the office, there was a first assistant, there was a criminal chief — they were all involved in these discussions,” Zelinsky said. He later named the first assistant as Alessio Evangelista.
Jordan asked whether these officials had spoken with Barr, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen or then-U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea.
Zelinsky responded, “My understanding is they did.”
Jordan, apparently taken aback, then pressed Zelinsky on the apparently secondhand nature of these exchanges. “It sounds like you heard stuff that you’re now bringing to this committee as fact,” Jordan said. “'So-and-so says to someone what they told someone else.'”
Regardless, to the extent the committee wants to pursue the matter, they apparently know whom to call next.
2. Zelinsky says DOJ abandoned the rule of law
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tex.) at one point asked Zelinsky whether Barr had abandoned the rule of law. She cited another withdrawn prosecutor from the Stone case, Jonathan Kravis, who wrote a Washington Post op-ed last month saying of his 10-year tenure in the DOJ, “I left a job I loved because I believed the department had abandoned its responsibility to do justice in one of my cases, United States v. Roger Stone.”
Garcia asked Zelinsky whether he agreed with that statement, and Zelinsky was direct.
“I do.”
The other two prosecutors who withdrew from the Stone case, Adam Jed and Michael Marando, haven’t been as public about their reasons for withdrawing.
3. GOP witness says ‘maybe’ Trump politicized allies’ cases
Whatever one thinks of Barr’s actions, even he has admitted that Trump’s tweets about ongoing Justice Department matters involving allies are problematic. Barr in February said that such tweets about the Stone case “make it impossible for me to do my job.” (He has declined to weigh in publicly since then, even as Trump has continued the practice.)
And the one GOP witness Wednesday, former attorney general Michael Mukasey, seemed to agree with that, at least in part.
Under questioning from Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), who is under consideration for Joe Biden’s vice presidential pick, Mukasey acknowledged that “maybe” such tweets constituted applying political pressure in an ongoing case.
“I can’t speak for the president. The president is, by definition, a political — ” he said, before Demings cut him off.
“Based on your professional — political or professional — experience, do you believe the president has engaged in a political way as it pertains to sentences or what happens to his friends?” Demings asked.
“The attorney general himself criticized the president for tweets —, ” Mukasey said.
“So that's a yes?” Demings asked.
“It’s a maybe,” Mukasey said.
4. GOP’s dodgy attacks on the witnesses’ credibility
Jordan and the GOP tried to undermine Zelinsky and his fellow witnesses’ credibility from the get-go, but again they may not have gotten what they bargained for.
Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), for instance, accused Justice Department attorney John Elias of trying to help Democrats with impeaching Trump.
“You wanted to come work for the majority during the impeachment. Is that not correct?” Collins asked.
Elias, though, indicated that his outreach to the Democratic majority on the committee came long before impeachment.
“I actually think that — I think it was a year prior,” he said, adding, “It was early 2019.”
Separately, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) picked up on the GOP’s argument that Zelinsky’s appearance via video was out of bounds or intended to avoid intense cross-examination.
“As a prosecutor … I’m reticent to discuss my family publicly,” Zelinsky responded.
Johnson, though, pressed him: “You have family concerns, is that right? Is that right? That’s what you tell us.”
Zelinsky responded, “I have a newborn child, congressman.”
Johnson then tried to compare this Mukasey, who appeared in person, saying Mukasey would quarantine himself after the hearing because he has a young grandchild.
5. A Barr predecessor: ‘We’re on the way to something far worse than Watergate’
Former deputy attorney general Donald Ayer preceded Barr in that role in the George H.W. Bush administration, and he has since been one of Barr’s most high-profile critics. He began his testimony Wednesday with some particularly stinging remarks.
“I am here because I believe that William Barr poses the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law and to public trust in it,” Ayer said. “That is because he does not believe in its core principle that no person is above the law. Instead, since taking office, he has worked to advance his lifelong conviction that the president should hold virtually autocratic powers.”
He added later, “I think we’re on the way to something far worse than Watergate, where you had a problem of public distrust, because it’s becoming very transparent that many things are being done essentially for reasons that are completely unrelated to the merits of the case.”
Ayer has previously signed letters decrying Barr’s leadership of the Justice Department and has called for Barr’s resignation.
